The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world”.
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Why is Mona Lisa so special?
The Mona Lisa is famous because it is widely praised as evidence of Leonardo Da Vinci’s mastery of human anatomy and natural realism. The Mona Lisa is also famous because of its exhibition at the Louvre, as well as its widespread reproduction in popular art and culture.
Indeed, the Mona Lisa is a very realistic portrait. The subject’s softly sculptural face shows Leonardo’s skillful handling of sfumato, an artistic technique that uses subtle gradations of light and shadow to model form, and shows his understanding of the skull beneath the skin.
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